Vehicle lighting fixtures that use a plurality of laser light sources have conventionally been proposed, as illustrated in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2013-016277 (or US2014/0168940A1 corresponding to the Japanese publication).
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating the configuration of a vehicle lighting fixture 301 described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2013-016277.
As illustrated in FIG. 1, the vehicle lighting fixture 301 can include a plurality of laser light sources 302, a plurality of condenser lenses 311 and a plurality of optical fibers 312 provided corresponding to the plurality of laser light sources 302, a lens 313, a reflective mirror 314, a light emitting unit 304 (or a wavelength conversion member), a reflector 305, etc. Rays of laser light emitted from the plurality of laser light sources 302 can be collected by the respective condenser lenses 311 and incident on the respective input ends (input end faces) of the respective optical fibers 312. The rays of laser light guided through the respective optical fibers 312 can then exit through respective output ends (output end faces) of the respective optical fibers 312, and can be collected by the lens 313 and reflected by the reflective mirror 314. The reflected rays of laser light can be incident on the light emitting unit 304 to serve as excitation light. Thus, the excited wavelength conversion material contained in the light emitting unit 304 can emit light, so that the original rays of laser light and the light from the wavelength conversion material can be mixed. As a result, the light emitting unit 304 can serve as a light source.
Therefore, the vehicle lighting fixture 301 with the above-described configuration can simply project light from the light emitting unit 304 (wavelength conversion member) forward by means of the reflector 305. Accordingly, the vehicle lighting fixture 301 cannot form predetermined light distribution patterns formed by superimposing a plurality of partial light distribution patterns, such as a high-beam light distribution pattern (for driving) formed by superimposing a hot-zone partial light distribution pattern, a middle-zone partial light distribution pattern (diffused more than the hot-zone partial light distribution pattern), and a wide-zone partial light distribution pattern (diffused more than the middle-zone partial light distribution pattern). Furthermore, the vehicle lighting fixture 301 cannot change the light intensity of a particular partial light distribution pattern out of the plurality of partial light distribution patterns in accordance with the condition surrounding the vehicle.